Book picks similar to
Japanese Girl at the Siege of Changchun: How I Survived China’s Wartime Atrocity by Homare Endo
history
non-fiction
biography-autobiography
translation
Flying Low
B.K. Bryans - 2012
Navy fighter/attack pilot from 1956 to 1980. (What it was like to fly jets off aircraft carriers in the days before smart bombs, GPS, and automated carrier landing systems.) After two years at the University of Arizona, the author entered the Naval Aviation Cadet Program in Pensacola, Florida, and became a carrier-qualified jet pilot at age twenty. As a naval aviator, he flew 3,669 hours in thirteen different types of aircraft, made 652 carrier landings (163 of them at night), and flew 183 combat missions during the Vietnam War. He was awarded the Silver Star, the Distinguished Flying Cross, and thirteen Air Medals. He went on to command Attack Squadron 35 aboard USS Nimitz.This is the story.
The Nanny Chronicles of Hollywood
Julie Swales - 2015
Amidst the fantastic luxury, sexy celebrities, and hyped-up household politics, the nanny certainly has more to handle than diapers and bedtimes. But if you’re just looking for dirt, you won’t find it in these pages. Instead, authors Julie Swales and Stella Reid share anecdotes and insights about what happens when money, power, and fame intersect with the highly personal arena of raising children.
Ah Well, Nobody's Perfect: The untold stories
Ian Molly Meldrum - 2016
Molly gives us his unforgettable encounters with The Beatles, Elton John, David Bowie, The Rolling Stones, Madonna, John Farnham, Bruce Springsteen, the Bee Gees, Rod Stewart, Russell Crowe, Oasis, Beyonce and Prince. As well as the tales that surround his other loves: the Australian cricket team, the St Kilda footy club and the Melbourne Storm."I have a lot of love for the great Ian 'Molly' Meldrum" - Shane WarneNo one has lived a life like Ian 'Molly' Meldrum. And no one can tell a story like Molly.
Churchill in the Trenches
Peter Apps - 2015
As First Lord of the Admiralty at the start of the First World War, Churchill found himself blamed for the catastrophic military fiasco of the Dardanelles. Thrown for the first time into the political wilderness, he decided to rejoin the British Army and take his place on the Western Front.The first standalone account of this period of his life since the 1920s, Churchill in the Trenches reconstructs his six months near the Belgian town of Ypres. It reveals he how he gradually won over the troops he commanded -- the tough but traumatized 6th Battalion, Royal Scots Fusiliers. And it tells the largely unknown story of how amid mud and squalor, one of the 20th century's most memorable characters became one of its greatest leaders.Peter Apps is global defense correspondent for Reuters news. In 2006, he broke his neck in a minibus accident while covering the civil war in Sri Lanka, leaving him largely paralyzed from the shoulders down. Of the 20 or so countries he has reported from, more than half have been since the injury. He is currently on sabbatical as executive director of the Project for Study of the 21st Century (PS21) www.projects21.com.Cover design by Kerry Ellis.
Nothing of Importance: A Record of Eight Months at the Front with a Welsh Battalion, October 1915 to June 1916
John Bernard Pye Adams - 1916
Nothing could have prepared him for the reality he ended up facing. Placing his focus on the day to day existence of the soldiers in the trenches, Adams presents a grim picture of mud-coated billets, relentless artillery barrages, working parties, training and the art of military sniping. Just as it would have been for the soldiers’ lives, Adams heightens his work with an emotive account of his first night patrol, the detonation of mines, battlefield duels and being wounded whilst out wiring in No Man’s Land. Understated and striving for truth over melodrama, Nothing of Importance is the original memoir of the First World War — the only record published while the conflict was still being fought — and the definitive account of trench warfare. Bernard Adams (1890-1917) was a British Army officer, joining 1 Royal Welsh Fusiliers as a Lieutenant in November 1914. He was the first of a triumvirate of authors who, for a time, served simultaneously in the same battalion: the second was Siegfried Sassoon, the third Robert Graves. Written whilst convalescing in 1916, he did not live to see it published.
21 Months, 24 Days: A blue-collar kid's journey to the Vietnam War and back
Richard Udden - 2015
Threatened by the draft in the late sixties, he enlisted in the Army to avoid becoming a grunt, yet ended up one anyway. He endured a grueling war in Vietnam and then returned to a country too angry to care. While his journey took unexpected turns, his choices got him there, so he did his best to react positively and keep moving forward.Udden delivers his story in a comfortable, friendly style. He conveys the experiences of basic training, advanced infantry training, and what it was like to live, work, guard, patrol, and fight in the jungle. The reader will feel the adrenalin rush of a firefight, the thrill of a wild ride dangling below a helicopter, and the humor in celebrating his 21st birthday on a firebase.Through his words and personal photographs, you will live through his journey exactly as he experienced it.
The Radio Operator: Robert Ford's Last Stand in the Fight to Save Tibet (Kindle Single)
James McGrath Morris - 2015
Ford put together a radio communications network for a nation that had up to this time relied on messages carried by foot over the highest mountains on the globe. More important, his radio connected the secluded nation to the outside world. When in October 1950 the Communist Chinese army began its march to subjugate Tibet, Ford risked his life by staying behind to send out reports over his radio to let the world know of the attack. The Radio Operator is an overdue and gripping recounting of Ford’s valiant effort to save Tibet from Chinese domination and his subsequent capture and imprisonment.James McGrath Morris is the author of the New York Times bestselling Eye on the Struggle as well as two other acclaimed biographies. His previous Kindle Single, Revolution by Murder, was selected as one of the Best Kindle Singles of 2014. His next book, The Ambulance Drivers, will be published in 2017.Cover design by Kerry Ellis.
The Boy Who Followed His Father into Auschwitz: A True Story of Family and Survival
Jeremy Dronfield - 2018
Imprisoned in the Buchenwald concentration camp, they miraculously survive the Nazis’ murderous brutality.Then Gustav learns he is being sent to Auschwitz—and certain death.For Fritz, letting his father go is unthinkable. Desperate to remain together, Fritz makes an incredible choice: he insists he must go too. To the Nazis, one death camp is the same as another, and so the boy is allowed to follow. Throughout the six years of horror they witness and immeasurable suffering they endure as victims of the camps, one constant keeps them alive: their love and hope for the future. Based on the secret diary that Gustav kept as well as meticulous archival research and interviews with members of the Kleinmann family, including Fritz’s younger brother Kurt, sent to the United States at age eleven to escape the war, The Boy Who Followed His Father into Auschwitz is Gustav and Fritz’s story—an extraordinary account of courage, loyalty, survival, and love that is unforgettable.
More Than Just Coincidence
Julie Wassmer - 2010
Little did Julie know how momentous this meeting was set to be. Twenty years earlier, when Julie was just 16, she had become pregnant. Worried how her parents would react, Julie had kept her pregnancy a secret right up until the day she gave birth. Ten days later, she'd been forced to make the hardest decision of her life: to give her baby up for adoption. As the years passed, Julie often wondered what had happened to her daughter. Now, through the most extra-ordinary of coincidences, Julie was about to find out. A temporary secretary called Sara had just started working in the agents' office. Sara had recently discovered that she had been adopted, and had just got hold of her birth certificate. According to the certificate, her mother's name was Julie Wassmer.
21 Months a Captive: Rachel Plummer and the Fort Parker Massacre (Annotated)
Rachel Plummer - 2016
Some residents were brutally murdered, others taken prisoner.Among those captured was eleven year old Cynthia Parker, who would remain with the Comanche for 24 years and give birth to famed Chief Quanah.Another captive was 17-year-old Rachel Plummer, mother of one, pregnant with her second child. She would soon have her first-born ripped from her arms, never to be seen again, and later watched as her second-born was killed before her eyes.After twenty-one months of captivity that destroyed her health, she was purchased and returned to her family. In this extraordinary account, her father tells of that horrible day when the fort was attacked, and his desperate efforts to find and retrieve the captives. Rachel details her terrible enslavement and how she eventually fought back.For the first time, this long out-of-print volume is available as an affordable, well-formatted book for e-readers, tablets, and smartphones. Be sure to LOOK INSIDE by clicking the cover above or download a sample.
Shang-a-lang: Life as an International Pop Idol
Les McKeown - 2003
It is a remarkable story of extremes, and a no-holds barred account of Rollermania.From the Trade Paperback edition.
White Water Red Hot Lead: On Board U.S. Navy Swift Boats in Vietnam
Dan Daly - 2015
The boats patrolled the coast and rivers of South Vietnam, with the average age of the crew being twenty-four. Their days consisted of deadly combat, intense lightning firefights, storms and many hidden dangers.This action-packed story of combat written by Dan Daly, a Vietnam combat veteran who was the Officer in Charge of PCF 76 makes you part of the Swift Boat crew. The six man crew of PCF 76 were volunteers from all over the United States, eager to serve their country in a highly unique type of duty not seen since the PT boats of WWII. This inexperienced and disparate group of men would meld into a combat team - a team that formed an unbreakable, lifelong bond.After training they were plunged into a 12 month tour of duty. Combat took place in the closest confines imaginable, where the enemy were hidden behind a passing sand dune or a single sniper could be concealed in an onshore bunker, mines might be submerged at every fork in the river. The enemy was all around you, hiding, waiting, while your fifty-foot Swift Boat works its way upriver. In many cases the rivers became so narrow there was barely room to maneuver or turn around. The only way out might be into a deadly ambush. Humor and a touch of romance relieve the tension in this thrilling ride with America's finest.
I'm (No Longer) a Mormon: A Confessional
Regina Samuelson - 2012
This is not as easy as one would imagine: She was born in the church, educated at BYU, married in the temple, and is raising more Mormons. She faced a serious conundrum: keep quiet (and avoid losing everything dear to her), or tell the world what being raised LDS does to a person's psyche, especially when they realize that everything they were taught and everything they hoped to believe is a lie. To expose the difficulty faced by Mormons who leave the Church and to seek support for their plight, Regina offers a first-person confessional memoir recounting her many atrocious experiences, managing to weave in enough humor to keep you turning pages, and enough brutal honesty to bring you to an understanding of what it is to be a Mormon, and to try to leave it behind...
The Story of Cole Younger, by Himself
Cole Younger - 1903
Following the war, Younger continued his celebrated career as a desperado, robbing banks and trains with Jesse James and other members of the James-Younger gang. A fateful attempt in 1876 on the Northfield, Minnesota, bank sent Cole to the state prison in Stillwater, Minnesota for decades. There he became a model resident, helping both to protect women convicts during a fire and found the Prison Mirror, a newspaper intended to shed "a ray of light upon the lives of those behind the bars." Paroled in 1901, Younger successfully sought a pardon, operated a Wild West show with his old comrade Frank James, and lectured on "What My Life Has Taught Me." Always known for intelligence and coolness under pressure, he published this autobiography in 1903, reflecting on the colorful and sometimes violent experiences of "the gentleman, the soldier, the outlaw, and the convict."
Dion: The Wanderer Talks Truth (Stories, Humor Music)
Dion DiMucci - 2011
He continued to make great music while slowly returning to his Catholic roots. His hard-won wisdom filters through his stories whether he's recalling how he went shopping with John Lennon and ended up on the cover of Sgt. Peppers Lonely Hearts Club Band or what it was like to travel in the Jim Crow South with Sam Cooke.Praise for Dion... "To this day nobody, nobody can rock like Dion."—Lou Reed "He always had the name that said it all...Dion."—Bruce Springsteen "If you want to hear a great singer, listen to Dion. His genius has never deserted him."—Bob DylanThe audio edition of this book can be downloaded via Audible.